


oh! darling

by imperialstark



Series: oh! darling [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Love Confessions, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Panic Attacks, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers is depressed, Survivor Guilt, Tragedy, Unhappy Ending, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24363493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialstark/pseuds/imperialstark
Summary: Steve Rogers was no stranger to pain. From birth, he had dealt with a whole slew of illnesses ranging from asthma to scarlet fever. Chronic colds that left him bedridden and trembling. Heart palpitations that stole the breath from his lungs.***But the pain of seeing Tony slumped against a stray bit of wreckage that had once been their compound—their home—outclassed every wound Steve had ever received. No stab wound, no gunshot,  no repulsor blast had brought him closer to death than this moment.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: oh! darling [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1784122
Comments: 19
Kudos: 98





	oh! darling

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I was sad over stony, and if I have to be sad, so do you guys. Be aware, Steve does have panic attacks throughout this fic, so if that's something that might trigger you, please take care of yourselves. I don't want any of you to seriously hurt yourselves. That being said, I cried four times while writing this. Enjoy!
> 
> Also, friendly reminder that I don't own Marvel or anything related to it. This is all just for shits and giggles.

Steve Rogers was no stranger to pain. From birth, he had dealt with a whole slew of illnesses ranging from asthma to scarlet fever. Chronic colds that left him bedridden and trembling. Heart palpitations that stole the breath from his lungs. 

One particular moment was forever ingrained in his perfect memory. The Great Depression had just kicked off. Steve had been 12 when his mother took on extra shifts at Mount Sinai, treating tuberculosis patients just to make ends meet. She had never meant to bring it home with her. 

The same disease that had taken her life six years later had first tried to take her son. 

He remembered feeling like he was in Hell as the fever and chills swept over him in excruciating waves. Each breath felt as if someone had wrapped his lungs in barbed wire. When his mother had seen the blood he had coughed into his handkerchief, her face had paled. 

One night as the fever burned its way through his body, taking what little strength he had with it, Steve finally heard her. During the few hours he was awake, Steve had only been allowed to see his mother; she had already been exposed to TB. Each hour he spent with her, not once did she fall apart. She would smooth back his sweat-soaked hair and press cold compresses to his forehead to break the fever as much as she could. She had stood tall, a pillar of strength, just for him. 

But at night, Sarah Rogers let her suffering show. 

“Not my _son_ ,” Steve had heard her say, and he could see her then, even though he barely had the strength to open his eyes. Her frail shoulders wracked with sobs, her arms wrapped around herself as if it would keep her from crumbling. “ _Please_ , God, don’t take my son.” 

The inferno in his lungs paled in comparison to the pain that had erupted in his heart that night. 

His mother didn’t deserve to sound like that. She didn’t deserve to sound so _broken_. As the fever ravaged his body, Steve vowed that he would fight. He would fight this disease and anything else that tried to knock him down, to make sure his mother never sounded like that for the rest of her life. 

The serum had been his ticket to freedom. His mother may have been long gone by that point, but part of Steve hoped that when she looked down on him, she could rest in peace knowing that her son wouldn’t be on death’s door anytime soon. Steve remembered the first breath he had taken after the serum went into effect. He had reveled in the rush of air that swelled in his lungs. Gone was the tightness in his chest, the lightness in his head. He had been reborn, devoid of every scar, bruise, and ailment that had troubled him for 25 years. Not even the war and HYDRA and all of their enhanced weapons could leave a mark on him, although they did hurt like a bitch; wounds that would have killed any other man, Steve recovered from within a day. 

But the pain of seeing Tony slumped against a stray bit of wreckage that had once been their compound—their _home_ —outclassed every wound Steve had ever received. No stab wound, no gunshot, no repulsor blast had brought him closer to death than this moment. 

For the first time in over a hundred years, he couldn’t breathe. A long-dormant part of his brain thought “ _asthma attack_ ,” but that couldn’t be possible. Why would the serum fail him _now_? After serving him dutifully all these years? So why couldn’t he breathe? Why, with every intake of breath, could he only taste ashes and blood and smoke? 

Tony’s dead eyes, black and unseeing, bored into him, and something inside of Steve’s chest _snapped_. Bile rose up, searing his throat. This was wrong. Everything was _wrong_. Tony wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be dead. Men like Tony couldn’t just _die_. 

“ _Not him_ ,” he thought. His heart stuttered in his chest. The cut on his arm twinged as he lowered the remains of his shield. “ _Please, God, not him, too_.”

The light in the arc reactor flickered once, twice, before fluttering out completely as if to mock him. 

“Mr. Stark?” a boy who could only be Spider-Man, given his spider-themed suit said, his voice wavering. 

“ _I lost the kid_.” The memory slammed into him with all the force of a freight train. A half-dead Tony with his skin pale and stretched taut over his bones. They had lost that first battle and with it, Tony’s child in all but blood; it had nearly killed Tony.

The kid’s—and that’s what he was, God, how could they bring a _kid_ into this—shoulders started to tremble. 

“Mr. Stark, _please_.”

It was the “ _please_ ” that twisted the knife into Steve’s heart. The “ _please_ ” that brought fresh tears to his eyes. After Natasha’s death, Steve thought he had cried them all away, but apparently, his body had made more. There was always more. 

Did the kid even know what he was begging for? But how could Steve judge him when he had done the same? 

Theirs was the pleading of children, scared and confused and desperate for the hurt to stop.

Pepper kneeled next to Tony, her head bowed in grief over the love of her life’s chest, and Steve remembered that this wasn’t his wound to bear. He willed himself to stop hurting, to stop feeling altogether, but he couldn’t. 

“ _He’s not yours_ ,” his brain supplied as if that would help him. “ _He was never yours_.” 

Steve’s shoulders sagged. The pain didn’t go away. 

* * *

Steve stood tall and rigid like a column at the funeral. Like a soldier. It had been two weeks since that final battle that had taken everything from him. He had _tried_ to make his peace with it. He had _tried_ to go on with his life. But that night before the funeral, he had broken, leaving his apartment a wreck. In public, Steve had always been silent in his grief. Reclusive. He hated feeling weak around others and only let go when he was by himself, raging at the cruelty and the injustice of the world with a fury that scared even him. 

He had screamed until his voice was hoarse, thrown furniture, and even tried getting drunk despite knowing it was in vain. He remembered begging at some point, just like the kid had, with bitterness in his blood and hard liquor on his breath. 

“Why did it have to be _him_?” he had said. No one had answered. 

By morning, Steve had been entirely devoid of all emotion, aside from shame at the state of his apartment. At least that’s what he wanted to project. Because the alternative...the alternative would have caused him more harm in the end.

So he stood there and paid his respects in a way that had suited his role in Tony’s life; an acquaintance. A stranger. 

The only one who had noticed something was amiss was Bucky, who had stared pointedly at Steve’s hands, which he had buried in his pockets. They had scabbed over in time for the funeral, but just barely. Steve had said nothing. What was there to say?

When the boat carrying Tony’s heart floated off into the distance, hugs and condolences were exchanged, and slowly, almost reluctantly, their group of mourners began to peel off one by one. Soon it was just Pepper and Steve left standing in the yard. Happy and Rhodey had left with Morgan to feed her. “Hamburgers,” Happy had said. 

Steve wasn’t sure why he had stayed. He had no business intruding on their home. But he couldn’t bear the thought of going back to that little Brooklyn apartment that felt more like a tomb than home these days. Part of him feared that if he went back, it would all start to feel real; Tony was dead, and there was no bringing him back.

Pepper pulled Steve aside, taking his head in hers, sitting on the wood and rope swing affixed to her front porch. A stray breeze carried the scent of sweet-smelling violets their way.

She looked beautiful, devastatingly so, and Steve was reminded of everything that Tony had sacrificed. She leveled him with a smile, although this close, he could see that her eyes were puffy. 

His suit was too tight around his neck. Steve was hot, too hot, and the sudden urge to tug it off was overwhelming. Hadn’t there just been a breeze? Why was he hot? The damper on his emotions loosened—there was the familiar pinprick of tears welling in his eyes, the tightness in his throat—before he got a grip. 

He shouldn’t have stayed. He had no _right_. He had no right to Tony. He had thrown that away the day he had decided to drive his shield into Tony’s chest.

“I’m glad you came, Steve,” Pepper said. 

At first, Steve figured she was lying, just for the sake of being polite, but no, this was Pepper Potts—“ _Stark_ ,” his mind hissed—if she had an issue with him, she would let him know. 

“I’m glad I was invited,” Steve said, his voice coming out steady, much to his relief. “Thank you, Pepper.” 

Pepper’s tilted her head. Her hair shifted with the movement, flashing like copper in the evening sun. “There’s no need to thank me, Steve. He would’ve wanted you here.” 

The disbelief must have shown on his face. 

“Oh,” Pepper started. “Oh, Steve.”

Why was she comforting _him_? When he was the one who took her husband from her? When he was the one who _killed_ Tony Stark? The tightness in his chest was back. He wasn’t sure if it had ever truly left him. 

He tried desperately to clear his throat, to wrestle some kind of control over his emotions before they broke through his carefully constructed walls, but _goddamn it_ , he couldn’t breathe—

“Steve, you’re okay,” Pepper said, her hands gripping his shoulders. The contact grounded him, brought him back to earth for a moment; Steve sucked in a gust of air that rattled in his chest.

“That’s it,” she said. “You’re okay. You’re home.”

No, he wasn’t. This cabin wasn’t his home, and neither was that lonely apartment in Brooklyn. Home was...home was…

“You are home,” Pepper said firmly. “You’re with family. That’s your home.” 

“I’m not—we’re not—“

“ _Later_ ,” he had promised himself earlier as he had gotten ready for the day ahead of him. “ _You can fall apart again later_.” He didn’t want anyone to see him like this, let alone Pepper.

“We’re your family. _Tony_ was your family.” One of her hands left his shoulders to smooth his hair back, just like his mom had done when he was a child. Steve found himself leaning into her touch, letting her words soak into his skin like ink. 

“I killed him,” he said, his voice cracking. _Steve_ was cracking. He could feel the fissures in his heart, spider-webbing their way through his chest, his arms, his legs. One more blow and he’d shatter completely. “I took him from you, and I killed him.” 

He was so selfish. Pepper was the one who’d have to go on without her husband, her soulmate. She’d have to look after Morgan all by herself, and once again, he had made it about him. 

“You didn’t take him from me,” she said. Her voice had taken on a brittle edge. “And you didn’t kill him. I let him go.”

She let him go. She made it sound like it was the most natural thing in the world. How good of a person did you have to be to release lightning after you caught it in a bottle?

“You should hate me,” Steve said. 

Pepper shook her head. “I don’t. Tony didn’t. I can’t hate what he loved. And he did love you, Steve.”

His mouth opened, but no words came out. 

Pepper pushed on. “He loved you. Maybe it wasn’t like he loved me, or Rhodey, or Morgan. But I do know he loved you.” 

There was no way. Tony was the type who had seen what he wanted and went for it no matter what anyone else said. He would have said something... wouldn’t he? But this was Tony Stark, Steve remembered. The same man who had kept the fact that he was slowly dying a secret for nearly a year. If he did love Steve, that secret had gone to the grave with him.

There had been a time before the Accords, before Ultron, when Steve had thought...he thought there might have been something building between them. Slaps on the back that had lingered too long. Their heads bent too close together for two colleagues, pouring over a file. And those late nights…those late nights when Steve couldn’t stay warm no matter how many blankets he piled onto his bed. When Tony couldn’t close his eyes without seeing exploding stars behind them. On those nights, they had found each other. And they had talked. About anything. Everything. Just because they could. Anything to make the nightmares stop.

And then Ultron had happened. The Accords. Siberia. And here they were eight years later. One of them dead, and the other halfway there. 

“I,” Steve began, but he didn’t even know what he was going to say. “He,” he tried again. “He was mine,” he finally decided. It was the worst possible thing to say to a grieving widow, but Pepper didn’t seem to mind. She had an eerie way of understanding him. “He was mine. He was my—he was my person.” That didn’t sound any better.

“I know,” she said. Steve’s resolve turned to water. His arms left his sides and engulfed Pepper in his embrace. “He was _mine_ ,” his voice broke on the last word, and so did the tenuous control he had over his emotions. He had always been prone to silent tears followed by hiccups and raging headaches that left him bedridden. The serum had taken care of the hiccups and the headaches. All that was left for him was to cry. So he did. He held onto Pepper, buried his face into her soft, long hair, and let himself die. A wet patch grew on his shoulder; Pepper was crying too. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. He knew it was useless. It did nothing to ease the godawful ache in his chest. The serum refused to cure that. Not even time would heal it. For as long as he breathed, he would carry this with him. Maybe eventually he’d be able to grin and bear it. Smile through the pain. 

Steve Rogers was no stranger to pain.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really proud of this one you guys, and hopefully you all enjoyed it too! You guys know the drill, kudos, comments, and bookmarks aren't necessary but they're much appreciated. For more stony/marvel content, check out my [tumblr!](https://imperialstark.tumblr.com)


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